Listen love…
I’ve been working in the Gender Equality/Inequality world for quite a few years now so it’s not often that something incenses me anymore - not because this whole issue isn’t still deeply frustrating but because I have become a bit numb to it all due to all the awful things I have seen and heard.
Well I thought I was becoming numb until the last 24 hours.
Firstly, I was absolutely livid watching the Liverpool vs Man Utd game on Sky yesterday. Not because Liverpool lost (although that hardly put me in a good mood) but because of Roy Keane’s constant interrupting of the presenter Kelly Cates. Perhaps he has no respect for Kelly specifically, but there’s not really any justification for that given her football CV - so I think I was simply witnessing a classic case of a sexist man who doesn’t believe a woman can have anything worth saying that would justify him allowing her to finish her sentence. To her credit, Kelly handled it like the professional she is and didn’t rise to it (this is one of the many reasons I could not be on TV as I would pretty definitely have told him to effoff at least once). Having said that, she did at one point after an interruption say ‘Yes my point in asking that question was that’, which every woman on the planet knows actually means ‘If you had shut up and let me finish and listened to what I was saying you would have avoided repeating the same point and maybe even been able to add a valuable new perspective instead’. Unfortunately, every man on the planet doesn’t know what that means - so effoff would probably have been more effective.
So there I am all wound up by Roy and then I see the clip of the Nigel Farage interview with Mishal Husain where, in response to her question about Russian missiles, he said - wait for it and I defy you not to swear when you see it - “Listen love, you’re trying ever so hard…”. I can’t actually remember the last time I saw or heard such a blatant example of sexism - these misogynists tend to be a little more discreet about these things. Well at least you know where you are with a dinosaur like Farage I suppose: this was beyond patronizing, beyond disrespectful - this was absolutely vile.
Two different men, two different examples, both showing us the same thing: a profound lack of respect for a woman as someone to be listened and spoken to as an equal. And lots of livid women as a result, who will not be quiet because men have told us to “Listen love” - we’re going to keep on talking and one day, if they really listen, they’ll realize how much there is to respect in what we say.